Another winning year for the Brits

Ben Swift opened British riders’ 2011 victory account in January, winning two stages of the Tour Down Under in Australia. A further 45 major wins followed for British riders in the country’s collective best season in recent decades.

Swift’s TdU wins kicked off a season of top-level professional results for male and female British riders as the nation firmly established itself as one of the major players on the international circuit.

The year ended on a high, with Mark Cavendish becoming the first British rider since Tom Simpson in 1965 to win the road race world championships title. Earlier in July, Cavendish won five stages of the 2011 Tour de France on his way to clinching the green points classification jersey, a British first.

Cavendish’s Tour success was part of a bumper July that also saw Nicole Cooke, Emma Pooley, Ian Stannard and Lizzie Armitstead take victories.

Great Britain finished the season as fifth-ranked nation in the Union Cycliste Internationale’s WorldTour rankings, topped by Spain. British-based Team Sky ended the year as second-ranked ProTeam behind the Belgian Omega Pharma-Lotto outfit.

Bradley Wiggins was Britain’s top-ranked WorldTour rider in eighth place after winning the Criterium du Dauphine, finishing third in the Vuelta a Espana and third in Paris-Nice.

Below we list the major road wins achieved by senior British men and women in 2011. We have only included wins in major races open to an international field, and those won by an individual – no team time trials. We have included overall stage race wins and classification wins.

What our list of 46 wins doesn’t take into account is the large number of podium positions and top ten results also achieved by British riders – not least Chris Froome’s outstanding second place in the Vuelta a Espana. It also doesn’t take into account the continued success that Britain is enjoying in other cycling disciplines.